


Second Hand News

by Madame_Ashley



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Jopper
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-16 03:22:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28949598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madame_Ashley/pseuds/Madame_Ashley
Summary: Joyce returns home to find an unexpected guest.Started as a Tumblr prompt for romance and got a bit angsty...Setting is post-Season 3 - Hopper's return!
Relationships: Joyce Byers/Jim "Chief" Hopper
Comments: 8
Kudos: 15





	Second Hand News

Joyce put the car in park and choked back a sob. She took a deep breath, exhaling slowly and gazing through the windshield at the darkened house in the grey twilight - the new home she’d hoped would change everything. Or erase everything. She couldn’t decide what she’d wanted more. 

A light came on behind the front room curtains and Joyce cursed softly, groping for the pack of Camels in her purse. Lamplight meant she wasn’t alone - Will or El must be home - and now she would have to get her act together whole a lot faster. No bursting into tears the moment she got in the door. No smoking three cigarettes in quick succession before dumping herself into the bathtub to cry under the shower in her work uniform. She’d done that once. Okay, twice.

She was just about to light up a smoke when the first raindrops hit the Pinto’s roof. “Christ,” she muttered, the Camel’s filter still pressed between her lips. “Today just won’t let up, will it?” 

Tucking the unlit smoke carefully back into its pack, she opened the car door and ran for the porch, purse clutched to her chest, the rain falling hard. She patted herself down for her keys, hearing the front door squeak on its hinges. 

“Hey honey, just give me a minute to get in before…” she murmured without looking up, pushing damp bangs out of her face and fumbling in her bag in case some secret store of energy and patience was hidden there. “Okay, now I can…” she said softly, the words dying in her throat. 

Jim Hopper was standing in her darkened hallway.

Ten months had passed with the weight of ten years, a virtual decade of aching. 

The soft, sad ache as she tucked the familiar plaid shirt back under El’s pillow while changing the sheets. The warm, sweet ache when Jim Croce came on the car radio. The dull, lingering ache of laying awake at night imagining all the different ways that it could have - should have - ended.

And now Jim Hopper was standing in the darkened hallway.

His close-cropped hair gave his features a severe look. His eyes had taken on a darker cast, and he held a warning finger to his lips. In his other hand, he held a sheet of paper: PLEASE DON’T SCREAM. 

Joyce didn’t scream, allowing only the smallest squeak of shock to escape her lips as she entered the house, dropping her bag and crossing the floor. She put her arms carefully around Hop’s waist, still unwilling to believe her eyes. 

He pulled her close in silence and she immediately felt how his body had changed; it was less soft now, more lean. His thick sweater carried the scents of unfamiliar tobacco and strange soap. 

But she would know him anywhere.

“You bastard,” she whispered, her face wet with rain and tears. His heart beat against her cheek, a miracle. “I - we thought you were…Hop, we’ve been so lost.” Her voice rasped as she resisted the urge to holler. She felt exhausted, her whole body willing her to sit down. But she refused to let him go.

Hopper was repeating something quietly, words like “I know” or maybe “I’m sorry,” but Joyce could hardly hear him over the emotional storm clouding her brain. “Shut up…Just. Shut. Up,” she managed. Then she passed out.

**************

Joyce awoke to the sound of cold rain against a window. She pushed herself up to sitting on the living room sofa. The house was quiet and dimly lit by a single pillar candle burning in its glass dish on the coffee table. 

The candle had been a house warming gift from Karen Wheeler. “Light it when you need to focus on something good,” she’d said, but Joyce never had and now she stared at its flame, puzzled. She tucked damp hair behind her ear and wondered how long she had been sleeping. 

From the kitchen, a tea kettle whistled, stopped abruptly by the click of a stove dial. 

“El honey? Is that you?” Joyce called. “I’ll take a cup, if you’re making one. I’m not feeling so…” 

Just then Hopper appeared from the shadows carrying a steaming mug. Joyce stared as he approached, her pulse in her ears, her scattered mind racing to fill in its blanks. 

Hop put the mug down in front of her with a small smile and stood observing her, unsure of his next move. Joyce averted her eyes from his gaze, putting her hands around the warm mug and inhaling the chamomile steam. She needed to feel something real, certain. “Hey, Hop,” she said quietly, in case he was a figment of her imagination.

But he spoke, his words forming her new reality. “Joyce, I need you to know that it wasn’t some stunt…I never meant to leave you and Jane behind. The Russians thought…well, I don’t know what they thought, but…”

“You were a prisoner,” Joyce said. The lips that had been trembling pressed into a thin, angry line. “Where did they take you?”

Hopper’s stance relaxed and he collapsed into the armchair at one end of the table. “Where? I don’t know. We left the States, ended up in some camp in the middle of nowhere…it was - I almost gave up.” He cleared his throat but didn’t continue and instead withdrew a crumpled pack of cigarettes from the front pocket of his jeans. He leaned forward to light his smoke with the candle’s flame. “How have things been? You…the kids?” 

The wrong thing to ask. 

Joyce let out a long breath, glancing around the dark room for her purse. She really needed a cigarette. “Oh, you know,” she said, trying to keep the emotion out of her voice. “Just the usual - things could be worse, things could be better.” 

Then all her fight was gone and she dropped her head, letting the tears fall in her lap, onto her shaking hands. 

Hopper moved to sit down beside her and held her close while she wept. Weak, angry and relieved all at once. When the ache had subsided, she pulled back and looked into his changed face. “I almost gave up, too.”

She felt his chest tighten as he released her. There was more to this. There was something else.

“I’m not supposed to be here,” he said, relighting and taking a drag from the cigarette that he’d left smouldering in the ashtray. 

“What does that mean?”

“It means that the Russians didn’t let me out for good behaviour,” he muttered bitterly. “And I don’t know how long I’ve got before they track me down.”

“Then how did you…did someone help you?”

“Let’s just say that Bauman’s knowledge of Russian - and Morse Code - came in handy again. But really, the less you know, the better.” Hop coughed uncomfortably then smirked to lighten the mood. “There’s nothing worse than owing that asshole a favour, let me tell ya.”

Joyce tried to smile but couldn’t ignore the terror underlying Hop’s tone. She stole a drag from his cigarette hoping to calm her jangled nerves. “What now?” 

“I’m not supposed to be here,” he said again. “Bauman has me holed up in this secret lair of his - don’t laugh, that’s what he calls it - and I, uh, snuck out to see you.”

Joyce grinned, wiping the tears from her chin. “What a sweet, impossibly dangerous gesture,” she chuckled. “But you didn’t answer my question.”

“What now? Well, I’ve got to get back before Bauman finds me gone, but I just really wanted to let you know that I wasn’t…that I was still around.” He took her in his arms again and Joyce felt the shudder of a sob course through his body.

“What about El? What should I say?” she managed, her voice strained by the intensity of his embrace.

Hopper let go with a deep sigh. He blinked as though he had something in his eye, but Joyce saw through the act. “Uhhh, tell El that I love her,” he began, refusing to look in Joyce’s direction. “Tell that I miss her and wish I could see her…again.” The last word sounded very small. Hopper rose to go. “And Joyce?”

“Uh-huh.” The numbness was returning.

“Be sure to lock up, okay? I don’t want you involved in this, but things have a way of not going to plan.” She heard him leave by the back door and the house was silent.

Joyce sat on the sofa for what felt like a long time, smoking the last of Hop’s Russian cigarette and watching the candle burn down. 

She heard footsteps on the front porch and soon the kids were crowding the front hall, talking and laughing about the movie they’d been to see. They greeted her in turn as they came in and Jonathan and Will went to raid the fridge.

Sensing something amiss, El came into the living room, settling into the chair that Hopper had occupied a mere hour before. She fixed Joyce with a look, at once penetrating and sympathetic. “You’ve seen him.”

“Yes, but how did you…?”

“I’ve seen him, too.”


End file.
